Colorado State University president Larry Penley is calling for more leadership from Gov. Bill Ritter’s office in finding additional money for the state’s higher-education system.

Penley favors a separate funding source – such as investing lease payments received from oil drilling or using severance-tax revenue – to boost money for higher education.

University of Colorado president Hank Brown is pushing for a state constitutional change that would clear all funding mandates and allow the legislature to craft a fresh budget every year.

Ritter is being mum about both ideas.

“There is an acknowledgment on the part of the governor that higher ed is in a worse spot today than it was five years ago,” said Evan Dreyer, Ritter’s spokesman. “We also have to keep in mind similar types of conversations that are underway around health care and transportation.”

As the presidents from the two largest state universities begin crafting legislative agendas, both are weighing fresh approaches to get more state money – and win confidence from voters.

In line with peers

A national study suggested that public Colorado colleges and universities would need $832 million more each year to be in line with the average funding of national peers. This includes revenues from tuition and the state.

Yet fewer than half of the people in the state view higher education as a top priority, according to a statewide poll last winter.

“You’ve got to have the governor’s office supportive, the business community supportive and the collaboration of the presidents,” Penley said. “If you don’t have the leadership from the governor, I’m not sure we can find a solution that can work for us.”

The “financial hole”

Ritter is committed to pulling higher ed out of the “financial hole” the recession pushed it into, Dreyer said, “but determining exactly how we climb out of the hole is the key strategic question.”

The Colorado Commission on Higher Education has launched an exhaustive study of peer institutions to see how much Colorado state colleges and universities receive in state support compared with like institutions.

The study will also look at tuition versus government support per student – and accountability measures, said David Skaggs, executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

Numbers will help

Skaggs said he thinks taking the comparison numbers to the legislature will carry weight. But he, too, is quiet about where additional money should come from.

Brown called the higher- ed study helpful but said it was a little like going on a date with a beautiful woman but not getting her phone number.

“The study is wonderful information; it’s where we want to go,” he said. “But we don’t have the phone number … to get us there.”

Several options have been floated to increase money for higher education, including lumping the budget with K-12, selling off the lottery or investing lease payments received from drilling on the Roan Plateau.

A state Department of Higher Education task force on Monday recommended shifting some severance-tax revenue from the Department of Local Affairs to higher-ed capital-construction costs.

State Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, supports the idea. But he also thinks universities are going to need flexibility in removing caps on tuition increases and a separate funding stream.

Disparate approaches

“We’re in the emergency room,” Romer said. “If we don’t find a solution to higher-education financing, our research institutions will no longer be able to compete with our Western competitors.”

Romer said the disparate approaches from the presidents of the state’s two biggest universities are understandable.

“When people are on a starvation diet, it’s not a good idea to ask them what they want on their first meal,” he said.

CU has lost roughly $20 million in state funding since 2002, when it was funded at $224 million. Brown, who is supposed to step down from the helm of CU next year, calls what’s happening to higher-ed funding a “train wreck about to happen.”

“This isn’t a hypothetical train wreck,” he said. “We’re going to have a train wreck when we have the next recession. … The canyon is coming up, and the bridge is down. It’s important we have leadership at this point to deal with it.”

Higher-ed fudging

Brown describes the “constitutional clash” of mandates in spending that leave higher education the only department that state lawmakers can fudge with in a crisis.

Other constitutional mandates include annual increases to K-12 funding, requirements to provide prison funding and Medicaid funding that is matched with federal dollars.

Penley said he is continuing to work to build CSU. He is pushing his departments to be more entrepreneurial.

“That is why I’ve worked on the supercluster concept,” he said, referring to an effort to build alliances of researchers and corporate experts to quickly commercialize technology developed by research. “This is what I’ve been doing and will continue to do. … We don’t have a perfect solution yet.”

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